


There's Only So Much

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [23]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics, just give him a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Bruce is used to turning into the Hulk.Except then he has to do it again.And again.And again.And again.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Avengers Team
Series: October 2020 Prompts [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	There's Only So Much

**Author's Note:**

> Day 23, for the prompt "exhaustion"

Bruce edged through a doorway and into yet another hastily abandoned room, the walls bare and everything but the light switch stripped away. A fine layer of dust covered the floor, and if he squinted, he could just make out the imprint of a boot. He mentally checked this room off the list, but took another sweeping glance around anyway before he leaned back out and into the dimly lit hallway.

It had been quiet for so long that the sound of Clint’s voice through the coms almost made him jump.

“Remind me why we’re here again?” This was accompanied by the muffled sound of someone kicking a large metal object.

Steve’s voice staticked back. “Recovering any old S.H.I.E.L.D. tech we can find, and then getting out of here.”

“But Hydra  _ is _ S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Clint pointed out. “Isn’t all of their tech S.H.I.E.L.D. tech?”

Steve’s only response was a sigh that crackled with static, but Tony quickly jumped in to fill the gap.

“For once, Tweety Bird’s got a point. That’ll never happen again, by the way, so you might want to make a note.”

“Whatever you wanna tell yourself,” Clint replied, and Bruce could hear the distinct grin in his voice.

“How about we just focus on the mission?” Steve broke in.

“Trying to,” Natasha said. There was a little bit of strain in her voice, like she was either climbing onto something very precarious, or squeezing through somewhere very tight, or possibly both, considering how much Hydra architects apparently had embraced the true evil-lair aesthetic. Bruce almost expected to walk into a control room with a big red end-of-the-world button—not that Hydra would’ve left anything like that lying around, judging from the amount of dust and overturned empty cabinets. “But it’d be a lot easier if the rest of you would quit the com chatter for three seconds.”

“Thank you,” Steve muttered. Clint made some kind of noise in response, but his own coms apparently chose that moment to cut out. How deep in the basement  _ was _ he?

“Yeah,  _ Bruce _ , stop talking,” Tony said.

Bruce laughed, and the sound almost covered up Steve’s exasperated sigh.

The team had been poking around this abandoned Hydra base (“How abandoned are we talking, though?” “ _ Abandoned  _ abandoned, Tony.” “Yeah, all right, I just don’t want to get there in my stealth suit and then have to change into a combat suit, you know how awkward that is. See, you never have to worry about these things as a walking American flag—” “The scans just came back; zero lifeforms detected.” “Thanks, Bruce—see, Cap, that’s all you had to say—”) for a few hours, but hadn’t found anything more than a couple files that Natasha had pocketed and a locked door that Thor and Steve had taken turns hitting against until it opened to reveal yet another empty corridor. But they were still combing every last inch of the place—they’d learned their lesson last month at a different base (they just kept popping up—as much as he didn’t like to admit it, there really was something to that “cut off one head, yada yada” routine) when the one hall they’d brushed over turned out to be the one that wasn’t quite so abandoned.

So here they were, four hours and about thirty emptied, ransacked, and rifled-through rooms later, without a whole hell of a lot to show for it.

Honestly, though, Bruce didn’t mind. It was careful, methodical work, and it was for a  _ very _ good reason.

And any mission was a good mission if it meant he didn’t have to transform into the—

Suddenly, Thor’s voice was shouting over the rest of the teams’ continued discussion; he’d been silent for a while, investigating something in the west side of the building, but now the urgency in his tone was all too clear.

“Get down!”

There was no time to react before the floor exploded from underneath his feet, and Bruce felt the world go green.

* * *

When he came back, his muscles were sore and his throat ached from what must have been a  _ lot _ of roaring, but he managed to pick his way out of the newly-formed crater of wreckage in what used to be a Hydra storage room and out into the hall that had suddenly acquired a new and unintentional skylight.

Dust floated through the air, and some of the chunks of wall and ceiling shifted dangerously when he set his weight on them, but he made his way over to the central room—where sunlight was currently filtering through from the half-collapsed ceiling—just as the rest of the team had evidently had the same idea.

He spotted Clint first, who had a stripe of something black through his hair and down one side of his face, as well as several nicks and cuts freckling whatever pieces of skin were exposed underneath his gear. Clint had a single arrow in his hand, which did not seem like it would be all that helpful, but he was holding it loosely, as though he’d forgotten it was there, and looking around at the rest of the team with wide eyes.

Tony was the next one Bruce spotted, probably because of the neon red suit he was still encased in (the stealth suits were lies. All lies). He was crouched down on the floor, and it took Bruce a split second to realize that that wasn’t by choice, but because one of his legs had gotten stuck in a crack that had formed during the explosion. He couldn’t see Tony’s face—the helmet was still flipped down, although there was the slightest dent right where the left ear would be—but Tony was moving, at least, wriggling around and trying to get himself unstuck.

Last was Thor, who emerged from a stairwell covered absolutely head to toe in dust from a ceiling that must’ve collapsed practically right onto his head. There were burn marks crisscrossing the front of his chestplate, and the knot he’d tied his hair back in was fallen apart, leaving a scraggly blond curtain hanging around his face. Mjolnir was still in his hand, but resting against the side of his leg as though he didn’t want to put in the effort of holding it up all the way.

Natasha and Steve were nowhere to be seen, which was… worrying.

And Bruce could only imagine how he himself looked: dirty and disheveled, with half of his clothes hanging in shreds over his shoulders and hips, and probably that shell-shocked look that Tony said he always got after a transformation (Bruce had argued that it was just him being confused, but Tony had shaken his head immediately: “I’ve seen you confused, Banner—come on, you live with me. That… is different.”).

They all stared at each other for a moment, and finally, Clint broke the silence.

“Okay, I didn’t want to be the first one to have to ask, but what the hell just happened?”

Thor stretched an arm behind his shoulder as though to adjust his cape. “Perhaps hitting the mysteriously glowing device with lightning was not the best idea.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, the sarcasm heavy in his voice as he finally pulled an armored leg out from under the rubble. “I think it worked out  _ great _ . Speaking of, did I miss a Code Green situation over here, because from the context clues—” He waved at Bruce as he stood up, the armor whirring.

Bruce shrugged. “Yeah. Not really a fan of big explosions. How long was I—”

“Only like twenty minutes or so?” Clint turned up the phrase like a question as he turned to Thor and Tony, the former of whom made the universal hand gesture for “so-so.” “Took me a while to get back here; the blast practically threw me out the window.”

“That must have been very tempting,” Thor observed.

“You know what, Thor—”

They were interrupted by Natasha’s voice calling out from another room. Bruce felt his shoulders relax just the tiniest bit, but the relief was almost immediately replaced when he heard what she was saying. 

“Guys, could you get over here? I could really use some people with super strength right about now.”

Bruce was moving before he registered that the others were too, and in another few beats they were all standing in a clump around Natasha, who was staring down at a pile of debris covering a very-clearly-caved-in floor.

She glanced at them quickly before pointing to said pile of rubble and saying, “Steve—”

And that was all she had to say, because Tony was already lining up the repulsors in the palms of his gloves and aiming them at the pile. The familiar low whine started as the beams glowed blue.

“The hell are you doing?” Clint asked. He jerked the end of his arrow in the same direction. “You’re gonna send a million tons of rubble slamming into him if you just blast it.”

“You wanna start digging?” Tony retorted, but he did lower the repulsors and take a step back. His faceplate flipped up, revealing a thin trickle of blood down his eyebrow.

Thor stepped up to join him at the edge of the pile. “I’ll do it.” He bent down and heaved one of the rocks—which had probably been part of the wall, judging from the shape of the cracks—up and out of the way. The rock in question probably weighed more than the Iron Man suit, and Thor lifted it with ease, but it still looked ridiculously small next to the enormous pile of debris there was still to go through. And if Steve was trapped beneath it all, almost definitely injured… well, they didn’t exactly have a lot of time to waste.

Bruce spoke up before he had even fully thought about it. “I’ll help, too.” Everyone’s gaze swiveled toward him.

“You don’t have to do that, Bruce,” Natasha said, and it was hard to figure out her expression.

Not that it mattered. 

“Nah, it’s okay. I think these pants are a little beyond hope anyway.” Bruce reached his arms out in front of him in a stretch.  _ Ow _ —yeah, he was still sore. “Uh, you guys might wanna back up.”

They did, shoes sliding on the rubble and backs knocking against what was left of the wall, and Bruce glanced around quickly before he closed his eyes and let it wash over him.

His skin bulged out, his fists clenched and swelled, and then he was swept out of his own mind as his heartbeat peaked.

* * *

The Hulk understood more than people gave him credit for.

He understood that one of his team was in danger. In danger, just like Banner so often was when the Hulk was called out.

He understood that he could help.

And so he did, tossing aside piece after piece of wreckage, digging deeper and deeper until the limp and bruised form of the captain was uncovered, and the others quickly leapt forward to drag him out.

The Hulk stepped back then, watching the proceedings with a tilted head, and then began to feel that tug from the inside. He growled, and—

* * *

—and then Bruce was stumbling, his hands automatically coming out to brace himself against whatever hard surface he was inevitably going to face-plant on, but he was steadied just in time by Clint, who seemed to be the only one not hovering around Steve.

_ Steve. Is he okay? Did we get to him in time? Did I—was I gentle enough? Oh god, I hope I didn’t make anything worse— _

“You can let go of my arm now,” Clint prompted. Bruce followed his gaze to where he was still clinging to the end of Clint’s offered sleeve and quickly let go. For a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure he could stand up on his own without the support, but he took in a deep breath and forced the world to settle.

“Sorry. And thanks.”

“No problem.” Clint turned away then, joining the others. Bruce followed, reaching them just as Steve’s eyes blinked open.

“Guys?” Steve asked, and it was clear from the expression on his—extremely grimy and beaten up—face that he had not expected to wake up propped up on the floor by a half-out-of-the-armor Iron Man on one side, a debris-covered Thor on the other, and a Natasha Romanoff crouched in front of him checking for signs of a concussion. “What’s going… going on?”

“You stood too close to an overexcited thunder god,” Tony said breezily.

Thor made a face. “Sorry."

“It’s… cool.” Steve shut his eyes again and leaned back. He was very pale under all the blood, but most of it had dried and the serum seemed to have taken care of any significant injuries.

“I hate to break up the moment!” Clint called, and Bruce spun around (too fast—he had to stop moving so fast or he really was going to pass out) to see the archer standing a few feet away on top of the remains of a column. He was squinting up at the sky. “But we’ve got company!”

“Did you have to say the words ‘we’ve got company’—” Tony started, but he cut himself off as he and all the others, Bruce included, followed Clint’s gaze up to the open cut of sky that could be seen in the ripped-out place where the ceiling had cracked like an egg.

Unfortunately, Clint had gotten his codename for a reason.

Hydra, being Hydra, and being the most terribly paranoid yet incredibly well-funded secret evil Nazi society on the planet, had apparently decided that completely looting their own base and vanishing once they heard the Avengers were planning a visit wasn’t good enough. No, they had to fuck them over just that littlest bit more, and now they had an alarm system (that had gotten set off by the explosion, because of  _ course _ it had) consisting of a flock of armored drones shooting through the sky right at them.

(If Bruce was thinking logically about it, he would have concluded that the Hydra agents wouldn’t’ve had enough time to configure a new security system as well as clean out the whole facility, and that this had probably already been in place to keep away any sneaky S.H.I.E.L.D. snoops, but he much preferred thinking that this was personal, because that made the anger just that much more satisfying).

Even though he was staring right at them, he couldn’t have said how many drones there were. Too many, that was it. Too many, and coming too fast.

“That’s not good,” Bruce finally said.

Natasha gave the smallest head shake. “Nope.”

Thor hefted Mjolnir. “You all stay here; I’ll handle this.” He started to spin it around, and Bruce actually stumbled backward as the force of the wind shoved him.

“They’re gonna blast you into oblivion,” Tony pointed out, but his faceplate was already sliding down. “At least wait for me.”

With that, the two of them launched themselves into the sky; one with a streak of red cape, the other with a trail of energy beams.

“Typical,” Natasha said under her breath, and she and Clint went racing after them, hopping over the piles of wreckage and vaulting up and over the hole in the roof.

Bruce was left alone with a barely-conscious Steve, and to be honest, he was feeling pretty barely conscious himself. The ground was tilting just the slightest bit, and every time he squinted at it, it wavered like a line of static across a TV. He could already hear the sounds of battle outside—small explosions, large explosions, explosions from lightning and repulsors and specialized arrows and jolts of electricity—but they echoed oddly in his ears.

The others had probably left him there to watch over Steve, but even from inside the base he could still tell that there were way too many drones out there for the rest of them to handle, not with two of their members—two of some of their heaviest-hitting members—sitting out.

_ I don’t really have a choice. _

So Bruce made sure Steve was as comfortable as possible in his nest of rubble, checking his pulse and muttering something vague that Steve probably couldn’t even hear… and then he straightened up, wobbled a bit, and transformed for a third time.

* * *

  
  


When Bruce opened his eyes, he was on his hands and knees on the ground outside, the shape of the base rising up in the distance. 

_ Oh, god. _

_ Where are—what did—where— _

_ Can’t breathe. _

_ Oh, god, it hurts— _

He was breathing hard, like he’d just run twenty miles. Every inch of his skin was prickling uncomfortably and there was an ominous feeling in the back of his throat like he was about to throw up.

_ Don’t do that. Just make it worse. Would be bad. Already worse. _

Great, now he couldn’t even  _ think _ in full sentences.

Bruce swallowed and rolled onto his side, but everything was spinning now, slowly at first, and then around and around and around as he was forced to shut his eyes. That was worse—now he was just more aware of the throbbing that pulsed behind his eyelids.

Everything was so quiet. That was weird. Wasn’t there a fight? There had to have been, why else would he have become the—

And then all the sound rushed back at once, flooding his system with shouts and bangs and crashes so that it was completely overloaded for a few seconds. He blinked hard, and then he could hear it: Iron Man hovering somewhere above him, calling something.

He looked up, and it seemed to take forever for his face to reach the sky, but when it did, he could just make out the blurry shape of Tony in midair—his attention half on Bruce and half on the cluster of drones spiraling around him.

Tony had probably been yelling Bruce’s name for a while, but it was only now that he heard.

“Bruce. Bruce. Bruce! There you are.” Tony’s helmet flashed down at him for a moment before he twisted and shot out of the way of one of the drones. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but why are you back already? Not that I don’t like  _ you _ you and everything, but we’re still under attack here and we kinda—” He fired a blast that sent one of the drones dropping to the ground. Bruce flinched away from the resulting surge of heat. “—kinda need the other you!”

“Okay.” Bruce wasn’t sure if he’d actually spoken or not, but since Tony had stopped talking, he probably had. “Give me… give me a second.”

It took two tries to stand up, and even then he almost fell over. He registered dimly that his arms and legs were shaking.  _ Huh. _

“We don’t have a second!” Tony shouted back, not looking at him anymore as another onslaught of drones cornered him from the other side. “Unless you wanna die from a shitty Hydra defense system, which I gotta say is nowhere on my top, like, eighty.”

Bruce shook his head. He brought his hands up in front of his face, and noticed as if from a far distance that they were starting to flush with green.

His consciousness was the barest tether, and it didn’t take much to break.

* * *

Bright.

Noise.

Many, many of the little silver darts coming at him.

Shooting their tiny bullets against his skin.

They bounce off easily (of course they do), but sting at the place where they hit.

The darts, the source of all those bullets, make a mechanical shriek as they zip toward him.

He roars back at them and raises a fist to meet the next one in midair.

It smashes easily, but there are so many more. So many more of them.

And he is so tired.

* * *

_ If the fight is over, then why is everything still so loud? _

Bruce’s eyelids dragged open, only to brush against crumbled dirt and grass. He was flat on his stomach this time, and any of the energy he might’ve had to change that position was gone. Completely, utterly, drained away.

_ It’s cold. The ground. It shouldn’t be; it’s the middle of summer.  _

And he was in a cabin on a mountain—no, he was in a shack on the outskirts of town—no, he was in a tower, gleaming with glass and steel.  _ No, that’s not right. _

His eyelids kept sliding shut of their own accord; he didn’t even realize it until he noticed the sun was blocked out. Each of his limbs weighed a thousand pounds, and his skin was crawling now,  _ crawling _ ; shifting underneath the surface to the beat of his too-fast-too-fast-too-fast pulse.

Bruce heard a groaning noise and realized it was coming from him.

_ The sun is so  _ bright…

He was on his back now, and he didn’t know how it had happened, but there were silhouettes moving toward him, and someone’s voice was floating into his ears.

“Bruce? Bruce—”

“I don’t think…”

“We have to—”

And then another, louder and much more urgent; and accompanied by a sound that Bruce had heard only too many times while working in Tony Stark’s lab, and it was the sound of a machine, a very large machine, a machine that was supposed to fly but wasn’t, a machine that was very, very broken and was going to cause a lot of damage once it—

“Hit the dirt!”

And Bruce opened his eyes a crack just in time to see Clint Barton— _ Hawkeye _ —straddling the top of a cracked-open drone that had flames licking up its sides as it fell, nose down, spiraling straight for the ground.

The drone hit the ground with a  _ CRASH _ that sent a wave of heat and flames and shrapnel everywhere, and Bruce felt himself launching to his feet even though he  _ wasn’t  _ himself once he got there—

—and the Hulk stood there for a moment, staring at the burning wreck as the miraculously-unharmed form of Clint hopped off, and he let out a low, plaintive growl—

—and suddenly he was Bruce again, and Bruce swayed for one second, then two, and then he was falling to his knees.

Everything went gray and fuzzy. Footsteps—there were footsteps moving towards him.

And voices. Voices whispering, whispering things like “That’s not…” and “Oh…” and “Nat, go get the jet—”

And then the voices got closer, close enough so that he could feel their warmth bracing his shoulder, lifting him up, and he heard a more familiar name coming from them.

“—anner?”

“Banner! Bruce, are you al—”

“Bruce, it’s okay, I promise you don’t need to—”

Bruce had a moment to think  _ that’s weird, why would they be telling me it’s okay? Of course it’s not okay, there’s a fight going on—a fight, and I have to… _

_ Have to… _

* * *

Bruce woke up. Again (he was getting very used to this).

But this time it was on a surface that was soft and warm and comfortable—so much so, in fact, that he almost immediately fell asleep again.

Were it not for the  _ something  _ that he could feel draped around his shoulder.

He frowned, his hazy brain trying to work through the process of wondering what it could be. Unfortunately, he was a scientist, and since there was not much data to go on as it was, his only option was direct observation.

Bruce opened his eyes—eyes that felt like they were melted shut—and determined that the  _ something _ was a hand.

_ Tony’s _ hand.

From there, it wasn’t hard to deduce that Tony had his entire arm wrapped around Bruce’s shoulders, kind of—kind of  _ holding  _ him, almost, and wasn’t that just super weird because this was Tony and this was Bruce and—

Bruce must have made some kind of sound, or Tony must have noticed that his eyes were finally open, because he felt a low vibration coming from the warm shape pressed against his side (it was a chest, a chest wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt with a sewn-over spot where an arc reactor hole used to be) and then Tony’s voice came from somewhere above his head.

“Hey there, Banner.” It was a lot gentler than Bruce would normally expect Tony’s voice to be. Gentle and… concerned?

Bruce made an incoherent noise. He had just discovered that there was a blanket of some kind folded over him (that was good; his clothes were probably destroyed by now) and burying his entire face in it seemed like the better option over actually making his vocal cords move.

There was a shift as Tony turned to talk to someone out of Bruce’s line of sight. “Guys, he’s awake.”

Quick, heavy footsteps, and then someone else was there, on his other side, someone with long hair that just barely brushed Bruce’s cheek as they squeezed in next to him (seats, he was in a row of seats, seats that felt a lot like the ones in the quinjet). Electricity hummed between them as the new person’s shoulder pressed against his own.

“Hey, Hammer Time,” Tony complained. “There’s limited space here, you know.”

Thor ignored that, and sky blue eyes peered down into Bruce’s own. “Are you alright? This fight seemed to be especially hard on you, although your other self fought with admirable ferocity.”

Oh, that actually required a response. Bruce cleared his throat, wincing a little at the rasp. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a lot of back and forth… I’ve never done it that much before.”

“And you will  _ not  _ be doing it again,” Tony said firmly. “Trust me on  _ that _ . I wasn’t exactly keeping count, but you must’ve transformed, what, three times?”

“Something like that,” Bruce mumbled, and that’s when two more familiar figures approached the edge of his seat. They didn’t try to crawl on, fortunately—Bruce highly doubted there would have been enough space with him and Thor and Tony already there—but the concern on both Natasha and Clint’s faces matched Tony’s.

_ This is a very weird day. _

Bruce lifted his head the tiniest increment and—yes—spotted Steve lying across from him, awake and alert and wrapped in bandages. Once he noticed Bruce watching him, Steve smiled and gave a little wave with the hand that wasn’t bracing himself against the seat.

Natasha was talking, right next to him, and he blinked to focus. “You okay there?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, and Natasha raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment further.

“We should be back at the tower in about forty-five minutes,” Clint reported. “Assuming no bad weather.”

He looked with narrowed eyes at Thor, who immediately adopted the most innocent expression that Bruce had ever seen.

Tony squeezed his hand around Bruce’s shoulder. “And then you can go to  _ sleep _ .”

There was something about the way he said it, punctuated just so, that made Bruce want to laugh, but just the thought of expending that much energy had him slumping back against Tony’s grasp. His eyes were starting to flutter closed again, and this blanket was... very warm.

“I might…” he started, in a voice so quiet that both Tony and Thor had to bend to hear him. “I might not wait until we get back.”

Tony’s laughter was the last thing Bruce heard as he slipped back into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
